Persona Fortress 2
by Hyphoplayer
Summary: A dark man lurking in the shadows is planning to bring down MANN CO., by killing 9 different classes of both RED and BLU teams, and sparing 8 different classes of both teams. Join The RED Engineer, Sniper, Heavy, Pyro and the BLU Spy, Scout, Medic and Soldier find out the murderer of their friends, and bring them back to life, and solve the mystery of the "Haven in the rift".
1. Before death

In the year 1971, the MANN CO. Industries is at the peak of its stakes. But a man is behind the shadows slowly lurking within its depths, waiting for the right time to shoot the company down. But years have passed and it is now 2015. Yet, he still waits for the time that some things that is valuable to his plan will appear. Something that would blur the peripheral vision of a human, and the time that no human knows.

…The "haven in the rift" awaits…

Friday, October 9, 2015

[Evening]

"Man! It's been like **forever** since we had a victory like that!" The Scout exclaimed. "Scout does hold a point, we never get to have such climax these days." The Engineer replied. The RED team was once again victorious in capturing the intelligence from the BLU team, and this time, they were on the lead. "It wasn't like those days when we were newly recruited." The Heavy said. The team lifted their heads in happiness as they remember their freshman years in MANN Co. "Ehh… we have bleeding friends out here." The Medic said. The classes snapped out of their memories to help out their co-leagues. However the BLU team's base is full with anguish and disappoint. Nobody talked to each other in particular, neither did anybody feel proud of themselves for at least trying hard to win. "Man, it's been **forever** since we had a loss like that…" The Scout said. "Scout does have a point, we never get to have such climax these days." The Engineer team lifted their heads in disappoint as they remember their freshman years in MANN Co., winning oftenly. "Ehh… we have bleeding friends out here." The Medic said. The classes snapped out of their memories to help out their co-leagues.

That was their side. But the time of darkness is drawing near.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

[Before Dawn]

The teams were sleeping deeply in their bases, as they usually do after a long day, but this night is not like the others. At the strike of midnight, all humans (except both teams) transmogrified into coffins and a thick fog covered the whole Dustbowl. And by the time that was completed, the man behind the shadows arrived. His plan is going to work if he checked the area. It was all a go. So now, he will retreat and strike in another time. But some people discovered of this upcoming mishap, and is going to prevent it.

The BLU medic awakens to the sound of the RED Engineer's voice. "Hey, wake up." He nags the doctor. "W-what is the meaning of this!?" The Medic shouted, as he woke up. "Me neither, as I reckon, I was just asleep at mah desk while I was doin' my work." The RED Engineer explained. The BLU Medic did not believe such a story like that. He attempted to kill him as revenge on what happened the previous day, only to find that he has no weapons. "Where's my Syringe shooter?!" The Medic exclaimed. The Engineer just giggled out of coincidence, for he too has no weapon at hand. "Ok, let's call it truce" The Medic said. "Yeah." The Engineer replied. "Though where are we?" Engineer added. Both men were standing in a black empty space, clueless to where they are. A faint, familiar voice then stroked Engineer's ear as he turned his head to the direction to where he heard the voice. "What is it?" The BLU Medic asked. "It's a Heavy." Engineer replied. The Engineer grabbed the doctors hand and ran to the direction the voice came from. The BLU Spy, Scout and Soldier were arguing with the RED Sniper, Heavy and Pyro. "WE WERE THE ONES WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO WIN YESTERDAY, HAD YOU NOT SHOOT ME MY TEAM COULD'VE WON." The BLU Spy yells at the RED Sniper. "SNIPER IS NOT MISTAKE. HE IS CREDIT TO TEAM." The RED Heavy yells back. "Woah, men, what's the problem?" The Engineer asks. "Mfff mff mmff mfff" The Pyro said. "And why are you arguing?" Engineer asks further. No one replies. Suddenly a blue door, outlined with gold appears and magically opens. "IS MERASMUS BEHIND THIS." The BLU Soldier shouts. But the voice of an old man, far from Merasmus' comes out instead.

"Please do come in, guests."

Arcana 1: "Before Death."


	2. Unwanted

Saturday, October 10, 2015

[Before Dawn]

The eight men stood wondering what this door could be, or rather, who is behind it, and why is it asking them to come in. The Spy looks at the Soldier with a complete scared face -a rare thing that these men do while at work-. "What are you looking at me like that?! You go first!" The Soldier exclaimed, then gives a huge push to the spy that he fell on the door's ledge. The door swings open upon impact, and reveals a square blue room, with eight chairs neatly lined side-by-side which faces a small round table and a couch behind it. And on the couch sitting was an old looking man in a tuxedo, and beside him was a young looking lady that is around the age of Miss Pauling. "Ain't anything bad 'round there?" The Engineer says, still standing outside the door. "The Velvet Room holds no means of danger, so you are free to enter." The young girl says. Being a man, the Heavy proceeds through the door, which he struggles with, and encounters no danger. "Big room you got here." Heavy says. After a long time, the group of men were persuaded to enter the room. After all were seated, the old man begins, "Now where were we."

"Welcome to the Velvet Room, this place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter." The old man continues. "Wait, 'dream and reality, mind and matter'? What is this, a joke?" The Scout rudely says. "No, this isn't a joke. And for that matter, in this situation you have come into, is a real serious one." The young girl says. The Scout just treats it like a big joke and slouches at his seat. "I presume you all work for a company named 'Mann Co.'?" The old man says. "Yes, we do." The Spy answers. Satisfied with the answer, the old man begins to introduce himself. "My name is Igor, and it's a pleasure to be an acquaintance. And this is my assistant, Margaret." Igor Begins. "We are the residents of the Velvet Room, but me and Igor are not the only ones inhabiting this room." Margaret says. "In the coming days, you will meet my little sister and brother, Elizabeth and Theodore." Margaret continues. "Does this Elizabeth look pretty?" The Scout says. "But at this moment, my two siblings are tending to the other two Velvet Rooms we own." Margaret says, ignoring Scout's question. "Wait, you have TWO of these Velvet Rooms?!" The Medic exclaims. "Yes, but we created this version of the Velvet Room out of urgency." Margaret replies. "Which leads me to my point." Igor interrupts.

"So, do you all believe in fortune telling?" Igor asks the men. "I don't. Since Merasmus used his dark magic to try kill us all." The Soldier says. "Then maybe… May I read all your futures?" Igor asks once again. "If it does not involve us going to die, then you may." The Sniper says. Igor then proceeds to magically summon his blue signature Tarot cards and waved his over the table to spread it. He flipped the bottom right card, and to his surprise, what was on the face of the card was unexpected, or rather, unwanted. It was the Arcana number XIII, The Death Arcana. "I don't know how to say this, but…" Igor stammers. "But what?" The Heavy says. "It seems that some people who you cherish dearly, are going to be dead soon…" Igor says. "Dead? And who are these people you're talking about, Igor?" The Spy asks reluctantly. "I don't know, but you must hope that the next card holds the power to revert it." Igor encourages. He then proceeds to flip the bottom left card, which reveals the Moon Arcana. "This card represents hesitation and mystery." Igor explains. And before anyone can question, Igor does something he doesn't do normally in his fortune telling.

Igor flips open the middle card and reveals the rarely used Arcana number 0, The Fool Arcana. "Now let me fully explain your future." Igor says. "Likewise I said earlier, some people who you cherish dearly, are going to die. But nevertheless, you can save them if you are willing to do self-sacrifice at one point of your journey. But during the course of time, a mystery will be imposed upon you all, and your duty is to solve it. The company you currently work for, will slowly crumble into the hands of a man who plans to bring it down." Igor states. "But how can we divert that?" The Engineer asks. "You can only divert such a tragedy, only if you are willing to resist against it." Igor says. Igor pauses or a long time and closes his eyes. "It seems that the sun is about to rise in the Dustbowl, that means we shouldn't keep you all here any longer." Igor announces. "In the coming night, we shall discuss further the troubling future you shall partake in and how you can avoid it." Margaret says. "Before you all leave, do you have any questions?" Margaret asks. Scout raises his hand. "Who is playing the Piano and singing around us?" Scout asks. Igor chuckles. "You will meet them, but for now, we must part." Igor says. Igor stands up and bows, and sits again. "Until we meet again."

[Early Morning]

The RED Engineer, Heavy, Sniper and Pyro were completely restless. The visit to the Velvet Room were too much for them to handle, the same goes for the BLU Medic, Spy, Scout and Soldier. The RED Medic notices that his teammates are not touching the breakfast he made. He bangs his fist on the table which captures the restless teammates' consciousness. "I made that meal specially for our team and you are NOT EATING IT?!" The RED Medic shouts out. And at that instant the sleepless men started gobbling up their breakfast.

[Afternoon]

During a break, the sleepless men ofthe RED and BLU team gathered in an abandoned house, where none of their team mates can see or overhear them. "What do you think about what Igor said in our dream?" The Spy started. "I don't know. We don't even know if he was actually real." The Engineer said. "Maybe he is real, but I don't really know. It all felt so real." The Scout says. "Ok, tonight, we all must return to that Velvet Room and find more answers about our future." The Sniper declares. And with no objections, they all agreed to try return to the Velvet Room and find out what's going on. But never did they notice that the man in the shadows has everything on line already.

All he has to do is to execute it.

Arcana 2: "Unwanted"


	3. Granted

Saturday, October 10, 2015

[Dusk]

One last time the eight men rounded up in the abandoned house to check on each other if any suspicious things may have happened during the day. "So any weird things that happened to y'all?" the Engineer asks. "No, nothing." The Spy replies. "How about you?" The Soldier asks in return. "The same as usual." The Heavy says. A sigh of relief comes out from all of them. "But, the dream we all had last night… was it actually real…?" The Scout asks. "Maybe. It could be real because we were all able to communicate with each other properly. And we got to answer Igor as if in a real life meeting." The Medic theorized. They all agree. "Going back to the point mates. We're goin' back to that Velvet Room no matter what the cost is." The Sniper decrees. The eight men agrees. But at that moment, a shadow of a young lady bursts through the door. "May I ask what's going on here?" she says. "M-miss Pauling!" Scout exclaims. Busted on-the-spot. "The Administrator has informed me that a 'friendship' has been built here and was instructed to end it." Miss Pauling announces. "B-but we're—" The Heavy explains. "No 'but's. End it. Now." Miss Pauling says sternly. In fact, the eight men weren't actually friends. They were just acquainted. The fire of war still burns in their minds for the sake of their given jobs, but at this state, they must douse it for a while. "But can we explain what's really going on?" The Engineer tried persuading Miss Pauling. "Try to give me a legit reason why are you all here, and I may lie to the Administrator that your meetings are done for good." Miss Pauling says. And so the men tried with all their might to explain to Miss Pauling about the Velvet Room, Igor and the upcoming catastrophe. After the explanation, Miss Pauling takes off her glasses and wipes it, as if a sign of mocking. "If I tell this to the Administrator, she would not believe me." Miss Pauling judges. "Furthermore, that dream you all are talking about, is nothing more but fantasy, I'm not convinced. I'm sorry, but you have to break this up. If not, we have no choice but to fire you all." Miss Pauling explains further. The eight men sighed, but they all agreed to go back to the Velvet Room at all costs. "Ok, Miss Pauling, you got it." The Spy says with a smirk. They all go out of the house and waited for the time they all go to sleep.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

[Before Midnight]

Both the RED team and the BLU team are sleeping peacefully as the night passes by, but the peace was soon broken when the man in the shadows creep up the base. He targeted the RED team first. He silently crept up to the sleeping borders of the team and took the lives of the whole team. But when he tried to kill Engineer, a bright butterfly lay perched on his wrench. "Goddammit, it's you again…" The dark man says. He then moves on to Heavy. But then again, another butterfly perched upon his gun, Shasha. The dark man shoots a dirty look towards the butterfly and moves on to the Sniper. The same thing too happened, a butterfly is perched on the tip of his sniping gun. The dark man got really aggravated at this, and tried to kill the Pyro, who was just beside him. A sharp, strong jab was interrupted, however, by a windy blow of methane gas. He looked, and saw the Pyro clutching his flame thrower, pointing right at him. The Pyro was asleep though, but by the trigger lays, another butterfly. The man got angry at this and moves on, leaving a bunch of dead bodies in the room, leaving the men with butterflies. The same thing happens at the BLU team base. He killed all the men except the ones with the butterflies near them. After the job was done, he left.

[Dark Hour]

Engineer wakes up to a wet feeling dripping on his stomach area. "Wha-?! I'm more than twenty years old and I still wet beds?! Jesus Chri—" Engineer says. He was interrupted when he felt his hands. Normally, piss would slide on your fingers, but the liquid on his hands were drying up every time he rubs his fingers over it. He tried opening the light, no electricity. He goes to the window and opens it, and to his surprise the sky was green and the Moon was twice its size. "What the—what's happening?!" Engineer says. A scream came behind him and as the Engineer looks at his back, he saw Scout crawling back very fast and tears streaming down his face. "N-no… it can't be!" Scout says in a shuddering voice. The Engineer was about to ask what was happening but at the moment he raised his left hand the moonlight illuminates his vision and reveals the liquid he has felt trickling in his face. It was undeniable. Engineer knew what this liquid was now because he sees it almost everyday. Blood. He races to his bed to check on the teammate who slept above him. And to his horror, he found that Spy was dead. Engineer shudders at this discovery, and slumps on his bed. He can't cry no matter what. Heavy woke up to the sobs of Scout and shouts "STOP CRYING. WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A COWAR—" . Heavy notices the Pyro staring into the corpse of his friend and teammate, the Medic. Heavy wails so loudly that it was heard by the BLU team. It aroused the remaining BLU team members and they discover the same thing: their teammates are also dead. And so, for the next few minutes, both teams cried at the loss of their friends and co-leagues.

After that, the Engineer stood up to get changed. "Wh-where are you going?" The Scout asks. "To the other team base." Engineer replies. "You're crazy! You might get killed too!"the Heavy restraints. The Heavy then blocks the exit of the room just as the Engineer grabbed his wrench. "Get out of my way." Engineer says. "NO!" Heavy shouts. Engineer wasn't going to have this, so he kicked Heavy at his crotch. Heavy then curls up on the floor to take the pain. The Engineer walks out. Halfway, he met the BLU Medic. "Our teammates are dead." Medic says. "I share your sorrow, doc." The Engineer sorrowfully says. "Is this what Igor said by 'tragedy'?" The Medic asks. "I dunno, maybe yes." Engineer replies. It was then after that reply a high pitched scream came from afar. "Who was that?" The Medic says. After a few steps the Engineer sees the Scout sprinting toward the area where the scream was heard. Behind him were Heavy and Pyro. "What's happening?" The Spy asks. "I don't know. But we must catch up with them." The Medic says. They ran over to the place where they heard the scream, and just then The Heavy was flung to the floor by a big black creature with multiple arms sticking out, with one hand holding a blue mask marking above the eyes in the middle a "I". "W-what's that?!" The Spy says. The creature on the other hand holds Scout, the other Miss Pauling. "Engineer, did you see that..?" The Medic asks. "What?" Enigneer replies. "That butterfly?" The Medic says. And at that moment Engineer and Medic looked at the butterfly. A strange feeling engulfed them, then it turned into a headache. "What's wrong with you two now?!" The Soldier exclaims. Engineer and Medic then started to hear voices, both of them were young men.

"You people seem to need help." one said. "This awfully looks like the Dark Hour." the other one commented. "And the TV World too." The first voice replied. "Who are you?!" Engineer shouted, "Show yourself!". "The strength of our hearts have seen your need of our power, and we shall grant you it." The voice said. And by mist of clouds, a gray haired teenage boy followed by a blue haired boy appeared. "Are we hallucinating..?" the Medic asked. Engineer shrugged. Both men and teenage boys came closer to each other and exchanged handshakes. "My name is Yu Narukami and this is.." "…Makoto Yuki…". "Narukami and Yuki… I presume you both came from Japan?" Engineer asked in interest. "Yes, sir we do. But we were summoned here from a long time difference." Yu said. "What year is it today?" Yuki asked. "It's 2015. What else?" the Medic answered. "You see, Yuki here comes from 2009, I come from 2011. And you men come from the future." It's a norm that Engineer and Medic start believing what they hear at this point on, because anything out of the ordinary is the truth. "Wait, Yuki came from 2009 and that's six years ago, you came from 2011 and that was four years ago and you came here in 2015 just to meet us?" Engineer said. "Yes. This is no longer the place you know or knew. This is a "haven in the rift" as you might call it, and time is never stable here, and that's why you see us. Plus, we came here for the reason that we need to pass you down something." Narukami said. "Pass what?" Engineer asked. "You ask too much." Yuki said. Engineer grunted. "You see, your team has the ability to wield the power of their hearts. So do ours. And they need leaders to lead them. We were summoned here because we specifically chose you to wield a special power." Yuki explained. "So what are you going to give us?" Medic asked. Both Narukami and Yuki grabbed Medic and Engineer's hand. A warm sensation filled the Mercs over, then a headache.

Snapping back to reality, everyone was panicking. Engineer and Medic looked at each other. "HEY, LOOK OUT!" Soldier shouted. A huge debris was thrown over them.

" _ORPHEUS!"_

Engineer leaped over and shouted an unfamiliar name and shot himself in the head. Blue light surrounded Engineer as a tall robot like human with glowing red eyes, and white hair with a harp at his hands deflected the debris, scattering shards of glass and splinters of wood everywhere. "What is THAT?" Spy muttered. Everyone was taken aghast at the un-human like form of the thing Engineer summoned. The black creature was moving in an agitated way and hurdled more debris over to the defenseless people.

" _IZANAGI!"_

Medic shouted as he hit a floating card with a slash of his hand. Another tall un-human like being was summoned, but it was wearing a black coat, carrying a sword and glowing yellow eyes. The creature held out his hand and lightning came out of nowhere, destroying the debris. The black creature was really _really_ agitated now. It threw Scout hard on the ground, so hard it might've broken his cranium. "Everyone get your weapons! While you're all gone, we'll take this thing on." Engineer said. "What?! You'll _WHAT?!_ You have got to be kidding me!" Miss Pauling said. Just as Engineer sneered at her, Orpheus glared at Miss Pauling. "O-o-okay everyone! Get your weapons!" Miss Pauling shouted. An admin order was never ignored, and so everyone except Engineer and Medic stayed.

"Okay, Orpheus, give 'im hell!" Engineer said. And with a graceful sway and a tune from his harp, Orpheus casted fire on the black creature. The black creature waved his hands vigorously as if in pain. "What if we gave him a shock from a human defibrillator?" Medic snickered. Izanagi then sends another wave of lightning paralyzing the monster. The monster doesn't seem to be getting up at any time. "Do you have a weapon?" Engineer asked. Medic looked over and saw a stray gun lying on the ground. "I do now." He replied. "Then it's a rapid fire." Engineer said. Aiming at the monster, Medic and Engineer rapidly shot the horrid creature. By the time the others came back, the creature was on the ropes, so was Engineer and Medic. Engineer was lying on the floor and Medic was about to pass out. "Where have you been?" Medic said. "Look out!" Engineer shouted. A hand was about to fall on them and the unconscious Scout when, when the monster was diminished by a man with a white tuxedo and a mask.

"You have a long way to go, my pawns."

And he disappeared.

Arcana 3: "Granted"


End file.
